Bitcoin, along with other cryptocurrencies, has been described as an economic bubble by at least eight Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureates, including Robert Shiller,[144] Joseph Stiglitz,[202] and Richard Thaler.[203][204] Noted Keynesian economist Paul Krugman has described bitcoin as "a bubble wrapped in techno-mysticism inside a cocoon of libertarian ideology",[135] professor Nouriel Roubini of New York University has called bitcoin the "mother of all bubbles",[205] and University of Chicago economist James Heckman has compared it to the 17th-century tulip mania.[204] Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has also described bitcoin as a "bubble";[206] the investors Warren Buffett and George Soros have respectively characterized it as a "mirage"[207] and a "bubble";[208] while the business executives Jack Ma and Jamie Dimon have called it a "bubble"[209] and a "fraud",[210] respectively.

Ethereum has recently created a new standard called the ERC721 token for tracking unique digital assets. One of the biggest use cases currently for such tokens is digital collectibles, as the infrastructure allows for people to prove ownership of scarce digital goods. Many games are currently being built using this technology, such as the overnight hit CryptoKitties, a game where you can collect and breed digital cats.
On 3 January 2009, the bitcoin network was created when Nakamoto mined the first block of the chain, known as the genesis block.[25][26] Embedded in the coinbase of this block was the text "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks".[16] This note references a headline published by The Times and has been interpreted as both a timestamp and a comment on the instability caused by fractional-reserve banking.[27]:18